Since 1970, I have owned 21 bikes, nine of them MZs. The first bike was the Noddy bike, which could cruise at 55mph and would make the Manchester-London trip at an average speed of 39mph, though by the time I was going down Park Lane the water cooling system had all but boiled dry and it showed its displeasure by emitting clouds of steam from the radiator overflow, which necessitated the refilling of the system via the radiator immediately. It had been an ex-police bike and due to a mechanic having left a piece of rag in the sump (!) the big ends, camshaft and just about everything else lubricated by the oil pump became scrap when the rag finally managed to cover the pump inlet. Despite attempts at repair which included a trip to Hall Green (ah!) it never really worked again and the Triumph T25 Blazer SS came along.
As an aside, Charlie, the old mechanic at Tooleys (later Deeprose) had a rather dim assistant who was once told to refill the sump of a Velo LE that had just been repaired. After a few minutes Charlie asked the minion “done it yet?” to which came the plaintive reply “I can’t find a sump filler cap with OIL on it. The only one I can see has 710 on it”.
The Blazer had a short though eventful life. It had superb electrics, brakes and frame, a reasonable gearbox and clutch but an absolutely crap engine. The first engine expired with a broken big end bolt, which let go at a sedate 60mph. Meriden fitted a new engine which leaked oil from new. It was eventually stolen near Northwich.
I knew the frame and tyres were good after the time I was going along a road somewhere in England (as the newsreels used to say). The road went into a left hand bend that did two things. It tightened up and then went uphill. I started to drift to the right until I saw a large lorry coming down the hill. I quickly discovered that the bike could lean until the (high set) footrests scraped along the road as I went round the bend in safety!
I think everyone knows the Fulmar.
I used to get the comment “didn’t know Ariel made a single cylinder Arrow” every now and then. One thing I did like about it was that it seemed waterproof in the rain, even when running without the dinky little mag cover I found for it at a breakers in Manchester. The cover was rather battered when I got it but, for a small sum, a panel beater returned it nearly to original factory standard. For its time, the brakes were very good and the handling OK.
Once on the M1 I discovered that its cruising speed of 65mph was badly affected by some of the hills. Several times the same lorry overtook me going up the hill and I overtook him going down. We waved as we passed each other. Another time I went down the hill from Crystal Palace in the direction of Anerley. The hill is very steep but the Fulmar would not go faster than 65mph. A policeman who saw me seemed to think I was doing 70mph so I knew he hadn’t got a good radar lock on me.
PS. I’m more law abiding these days.
However, among the Fulmar’s less attractive shortcomings was a totally inadequate lighting system. When one cannot see well enough in the dark the first impulse is to slow down, but that causes the direct lighting to get dimmer, which causes one to slow and so on.
Eventually the flywheel of the flywheel magneto ignition/ lighting system fragged itself (for the 2nd time) and I decided to go for a new (small) bike.
But to keep in sequence, I had bought the Velocette Venom in 1973 and several days later was chased up Dulwich Common by a police car. He caught me at home but had not been able to log my speed. As I was going through my documentation I saw the MOT for the Fulmar and read it out sotto voce. The police man heard the word Fulmar and just said “the throttle works two ways” before departing!
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